I’ve found myself drawn to a particular style of content lately. Posts where I, as the viewer, feel like a fly on the wall. No one is talking at me, instead I’m simply observing. In my Brand Social Trend Report: Q4 2025 I called it “spectator social”.
The format uses a similar approach as Wimbledon’s Overheard videos or NFL’s Mic’d Up series—but applies it to places like orchestras, restaurants, and medical offices.
Esthetician Sofie Pavitt films her consultations with clients, talking to them instead of the viewer. Minnesota Orchestra recently mic’d up their second violin during a Brahms Requiem rehearsal. The Elbo Room, a bar in Fort Lauderdale, takes this format to the extreme by livestreaming different areas of the bar every single day, with clips going viral on TikTok.
When I interviewed the team behind The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, they told me a big unlock moment came when instead of filming employees talking directly to camera, they stepped to the side to film real customer interactions. “That was really one thing that made a huge difference in the performance of the videos.”
Perhaps the most unexpected version of this format comes from Modern Animal, a veterinary care company that has garnered over 50M views in just three months. As I learned in today’s interview, they have a multi-camera setup in their office, filming hours of footage of their veterinarians interacting with animals. One reel might swap between two or three different camera angles of the same scene. Their approach feels more Bravo than medical office.
What I’ve found through studying these accounts is that it’s clearly one of the most effective formats for building trust with your audience. It allows your brand to show, not tell. There’s not the usual “performance” that comes with participating in a trend or talking directly to camera. Importantly, it makes you want to be a customer, without ever hard selling.
For today’s newsletter, I talked to Bailey James, Senior Manager of Brand at Modern Animal, about how they operationalize “spectator social”. We cover the reality show psychology, what a shoot day looks like (“the team is rolling for five to seven hours in a clinic”), and the growth they’ve seen from these videos.
Rachel Karten: If you had to sum up Modern Animal’s social media philosophy, what would it be?
Bailey James: The point of social for us has really been to build trust in our people and brand at scale. Like a lot of other health and wellness brands trying to solve for the same thing, we started with a ton of assumptions about how that trust gets built, like: “we need to be viewed as an authority; to be viewed as an authority, content needs to be a certain fidelity level; we need to ~EDUCATE~ people!”
We’ve obviously now tested out of a lot of those assumptions and into a much more grounded philosophy, which is that the best way for us to build that trust is by getting on peoples’ level and focusing more on showing people, rather than telling them, how much we care about the work we do here at Modern Animal.
RK: In November, you gained an impressive 36K followers on Instagram. What do you attribute to that growth?
BJ: We’re building a genuinely fun, character-driven world that feels closer to Bravo’s social playbook than a typical veterinary company’s, and that less obvious approach has definitely played a role. But I think the pop itself came from nine straight months of pretty relentless consistency, volume, and pace finally compounding.
In the months leading up to November, we’d been chipping away at this strategy for most of the year and had built a really enthusiastic fanbase within pockets of both TikTok and Instagram that were immediately relevant to our niche (shout out to the people of VetTok!).
Paying close attention to what those early fans were engaging with helped us fine-tune the format, so when we finally broke containment from our corner of the internet with a 25M+ view post, we were ready to pour gas on the fire and give people more of what we’d already gotten pretty good at making. That led to the massive jump in our following.
And as is often the case with things like this, luck and some blessings from the social gods probably played a small part too.
RK: Talk to me about how you came up with the idea to mic up your veterinarians. Why do you think the videos are resonating?
BJ: So huge shoutout to Zoe Taylor, our Creative Producer, for being the driving force behind this concept. She spent the beginning of her career in the sports world before joining us for a change of scenery, and the mic’d up format is obviously huge in that space as a way to pull back the curtain and engage fans.
While we don’t have world-famous athletes on our payroll, I’d argue that our clinic teams are no less enigmatic, and full of big personalities who are incredibly talented and genuinely passionate about what they do. Our team has always been central to our brand, but mic’d up’s ability to capture them in their element, with minimal editorialization, felt really refreshing compared to the carefully composed branded content we’d been making before this shift.
As for why it’s resonating, I think there’s a lot of psychology at play. In most veterinary practices, pet parents are never allowed “in the back,” and in that sense the content helps counter some of the anxiety that comes from veterinary care historically feeling opaque.
And maybe a slightly conspiratorial take, but because people are seeing something they’re normally not privy to, I’d bet there’s probably a bit of subconscious voyeurism there too. I wonder what Freud would think of our TikTok.
RK: Commenters will regularly say that this is their new favorite reality show. I think there’s a psychological difference between an audience watching someone talk face-to-camera in a social video versus the audience almost feeling like they are peeking in on a real moment. Did you notice a change in the nature of the comments when you started filming this way?
BJ: Yeah, those comments have been really cool to see, because they’ve shown us that people are actually picking up what we’re putting down. We’re all fans of reality TV shows like Love Island and Big Brother, and workplace comedies like The Office, which also gets referenced in the comments a lot.
You’re definitely right about the psychological effect of the format. Reality TV works because people develop parasocial relationships with the cast, and we’ve seen that same thing start to happen in our comments. People quote callbacks to things someone said weeks ago, reference running jokes (phrases like “don’t worry ginger” are here to stay), come up with nicknames for members of our team, and get excited when a familiar face shows back up in their feeds. It’s honestly been a trip for everyone involved.
RK: I’ve spotted a few cameras that are set up around the office that capture these moments. Can you explain to me how you are filming? How much footage are you capturing on a shoot day?
BJ: The big thing to keep in mind is that we’re filming inside clinics that are open and actively seeing patients, so being as out of our team’s way as possible is non-negotiable. To make it happen, Zoe’s built a pretty impressive multi-camera setup that can be remotely monitored via feed and controlled from a more tucked-away part of the clinic.
On a typical shoot day, the team is rolling for five to seven hours in a clinic, which gives us a ton of raw material to pull from later.
RK: How many cameras you have set up around the office in that multi-camera set up?
BJ: Depends on the day but up to four!
RK: What does the team look like who films and edits this content?
BJ: The Zoe(y)’s! I’ve already mentioned our Creative Producer, Zoe Taylor, who’s architected our ability to capture and process all the raw material needed to make this format work. Her partner in crime is our social manager, Zoey Greenberg, who’s mastered the art of distilling everything we capture into the social-ready clips that find their way onto your feed. Together they’ve formed a symbiotic relationship that’s been critical to our success.
(By the way, I swear having the name Zoe/Zoey is not a prerequisite to join Modern Animal’s brand team.)
RK: Do any of the veterinarians get recognized now or have people request to see them specifically?
BJ: Yep, and it’s honestly been one of the coolest parts of this whole thing.
Dr. Emma Gober, who practices in our Cherry Creek clinic in Denver, was featured in the post that ended up hitting around 12M views on TikTok and 25M on Instagram. Since then, she’s seen a huge lift in her own following. Before that moment she had fewer than 10K followers on TikTok, and last I checked she was up around 80K. She’s even had a visiting veterinary extern ask for a photo together so they could send it back to their friends at school!
I’ve also heard other members of the team mention that old classmates and friends have reached out after seeing them organically pop up on their FYP. It’s been pretty wild all around, and I’m really glad Modern Animal has been able to give people who want it a moment in the spotlight.
RK: Related, have you noticed an uptick in customers or inquiries based on the virality? The success of the mic’d up videos really lends itself to your core business. I see people commenting that they always worry about what’s happening to their pet when they get taken to the back and this series helps them feel so much better. It builds trust!
BJ: We’ve definitely seen our more viral weeks correlate with elevated branded search volume and traffic to our site. That awareness naturally means more people willing to give us a try with their pet’s care when they need it.
And there’s that word again! Trust! Like I mentioned earlier, I think that the content does a great job of showing people from outside the world of veterinary care something they historically haven’t been allowed to see when visiting the vet. Interestingly enough, one of Modern Animal’s main value props is that our clinics are “open concept”—meaning you can follow your pet through their whole visit if you want—so the content really emulates that transparent experience for the uninitiated.
RK: Will you be leaning even more into this style of content in 2026?
BJ: For sure! And hopefully some other weird stuff too.
RK: What advice would you give a social team that is struggling to break through right now?
BJ: Look for the idea sitting right next to the one you’re already in love with. If you really know your brand and your customer, you’re probably directionally right about what you’re trying to say. You just haven’t challenged your assumptions enough to figure out how to say it in a way that actually lands for your audience on social.
What I’m scrolling
We’re not nostalgic for 2016 — we’re nostalgic for the internet before all the slop. Great read from TechCrunch.
This video from Luxembourg Philharmonic is gorgeous. I can’t stop watching it.
Creator Bashel Lewis posted a video about getting fired from his job in social media, warning others to look into their company’s Conflict of Interest policy. I emailed him to learn more. He shared, “I wanted to share my story because we’re seeing more and more creators start in corporate roles, discover a passion for content, and then gain visibility outside of their jobs. What I realized is that a lot of companies don’t actually know how to define conflict of interest when it comes to creators. That uncertainty creates a gray area where creators are often limited or penalized for building something of their own. At the same time, companies say they want to move at the speed of culture. But doing that requires having people on your team who actively participate in it like being a creator. I’ve heard from hundreds of people who have experienced something similar, and it reminded me why I shared in the first place.”
These AI explainer videos are going very viral. I prefer this guy’s recreation of them.
Romeo Bingham’s Dr Pepper jingle, which went viral on TikTok a few weeks ago, was featured in a TV spot aired during the College Football Playoff National Championship. The TikToks celebrating the move have millions of views.
I love this sweet vignette the restaurant Tony & Pete’s shared. Perfect music.
Finally, thank you to the reader who DMed me Modern Animal’s content a few months back!
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Great read. I'm a marketing coordinator for a veterinary clinic in Canada that's constantly inspired by what Modern Animal is doing in the field. Even people I know that don't work in vet med reference Modern Animal's video format when talking about stellar content out there. Kudos!
I lit up when I saw this subject line - I’m the reader!!! 😀 Loved reading about how they put this all together. Thank you!!